This is Not a Love Story (17 page)

I let myself have this moment, however brief. I don’t look at his face. I can’t accept the desolation laid out like a wasteland in his eyes. My mind flees from the truth of our situation, from the fact that Julian is barely even there with me. I need him so fucking much, but I can’t dwell on that. He is already crushed beneath some great weight, something he thinks he has got to face alone. And maybe he has, because I’m not sure I can be strong enough for both of us for long.

Eventually the rain eases, and I drag our sorry selves onward, guessing the direction I move in from the ragged gray skyline I can barely make out.

I’m not in good shape. I must have dragged us over half of fucking east London. I will myself to be angry, pissed off, anything to keep going, but I don’t know how much longer I can. Julian is just a shadow, trailing listless behind me.

What am I fucking doing?

Running
, a voice whispers hauntingly, filling the streets. I stop and turn suddenly at the imaginary sound.
Running blind
.

And maybe I am.

Above us the clouds start to thicken and darken, but not from the threat of a storm; suddenly it is late afternoon. We haven’t eaten or rested all day. We’re dizzily running on air. I have no idea where we are going to spend the night, and I need to find somewhere dry. If I give up on these crucial things, I might as well give up entirely.

We come to a market in some filthy unknown corner of the city. A woman wearing layer upon layer of fleeces packing away a fruit and veg stall takes pity on us and gives us a bag of bruised fruit that will be inedible by the morning.

It’s this sudden kindness more than my near passed-out exhaustion or Julian’s anguished expression that finally lets me stop.

We huddle in the doorway of an empty shop. She watches us out of the corner of her eye as she packs up the rest of her stall into a battered old van. Maybe she thinks I don’t notice the way she looks at us, a mixture of pity and dread. I don’t mind. I can tell she has her own kids at home. And who would want this for their own?

There are a lot of empty shops down the street, all boarded up and inaccessible. Shabby markets like this one are making a sudden resurgence in their wake. I wish I had the impulse to draw the scenes around me. I wish I could draw something beautiful, because I know it’s there, it’s everywhere, but my inspiration has gone, fled like the whispers on the wind.

Maybe for good
, I think darkly.

I hold out the bag of fruit to Julian, but he shakes his hanging head. I feel like flinging it across the street, but I’m too hungry to waste food on frustration, and instead I reach inside, take out an apple, and start to eat it. After a few bites, Julian reaches and takes a piece of fruit too. The market woman waves as she leaves. I nod. I have no energy to lift my hand any farther than my mouth. Across the wet street the lights of a cafe glow warmly. A few people sit chatting happily at the tables. I can’t stand it. Hastily I pick up the bag of fruit, my fingers find Julian’s jumper, and without having to pull him, we get up and leave.

It’s night before we find ourselves in familiar territory. I can smell the river, almost feel the way the waters rush like a pulse through a vein.

Light-headed, I stumble, fall. I feel as though I am hopelessly trying to hold myself together, but I’m so weak I’m separating into pieces, falling through the net. Between bouts of coughing into the pavement, I hear drunken laughter I recognize. I hear swearing, a shout, Julian’s name called from across the street, and it brings me back. Julian crouches low and unresponsive behind me. I wish his arms were around me, holding me together, away from the edge, soothing the pain, like this morning. I wish someone would take this awful day back, destroy it, obliterate it. I would gladly have taken my chances at the shelter.

Looking around under the sparkling glare of the street lamp, I see Roxy staggering toward us, his arms around a boy, a much younger boy, who looks just about as far gone as he is. Roxy and I were on the streets together for a while, before he got swallowed up and consumed by them. He sells himself as Julian did, but I still find it in myself to be shocked to see how hollow he has become.

“Jules!” he shouts again.

I can’t decide whether or not I want him to go away. I’m not sure I can cope with other people right now. He looks awful, his hair sticking up rakish and unwashed, his clothes dirty. Our ages are similar, and he still has an innocence that will make him desirable, to some, whatever his state of dress, but
fuck
it hurts to see him like this, his eyes flat as though there’s nothing left inside.

Where’s Cricket?
I sign, when he is close enough to see my movements.

Sinking down onto the wet pavement, he slings an arm around my shoulder and reaches out for Julian.

“My best friends!” he slurringly informs the boy hanging back behind him, ignoring my question to grin at us all in turn.

I move away on hands and knees and cough into the gutter. I know I’m bringing up more blood now; I can taste it.

When I crawl back, Julian is drinking deeply from some label-less plastic bottle the boy was carrying. It could be anything.
And Julian couldn’t care less
, I think bitterly. We don’t look at one another, or rather he doesn’t look at me. If he did,
I
would be looking away.

Roxy holds the bottle out for me, but I hit his hand away, and he moves swiftly out of my reach so as not to spill a drop.

Silently, between them they finish it. The boy’s name is Pasha, and from his perch against the wall he stares at me. Roxy talks and talks and doesn’t seem to notice no one else is joining in. Pasha’s dark eyes on me are beginning to make me uncomfortable. And I stare back, noticing how similar our coloring is, our appearance—black hair, black eyes, pale skin, oval faces.

What?
I sign, doubting he can understand me but needing to show my frustration.

“You can’t talk?” he says in Russian. His voice is light, young.

It’s only after I’ve understood him that I realize the language difference.

I shake my head.

In one great stride he invades my space, boldly runs his finger against my cheek. He is freezing.

“I
know
you,” he says with sudden clarity, again in Russian.

I’m so shocked by his hand on me, I can’t respond.

He drops down to his knees, so we’re eye to eye, so close.

“I’ve seen you,” he whispers. “At the train station.”

Behind him, I become aware of Julian watching the both of us, but his expression is so pained I can’t tell what he is thinking, and he doesn’t come and haul Pasha away.

Before I can ask Pasha what he means, what station, when—because apart from the tube, I haven’t been to a train station for months—Roxy waves the bottle around.

“We’ve got more back at the Bank, come on,” he shouts and starts to haul Julian to his feet. He holds out his hand to me, and Pasha melts away into the background, the sudden fervor and clearness gone from the boy’s eyes, and he looks wasted once again.

“Come on, Romeo. Come back with us. Have you heard about Cassey’s? Fucking destroyed, wasn’t it…?” Roxy chatters on inanely, not realizing how fucking devastated we are, how fucking past the brink.

“But Cassey’s okay, though?” Julian asks roughly, the first words he’s spoken in hours.

Roxy nods, fleetingly looking like the boy I once knew, the boy who was affected by things before that part of him shrank away to nothing so he could survive.

“She was taken to hospital. But they didn’t keep her in for long. Her sister has a cafe near the Bank. I’ve seen her there.”

The relief takes me for a moment, and I close my eyes. When I open them, everyone has moved off.

Julian glances back, our eyes meeting for half a second before he walks away with Roxy.

I don’t know what that means
, I want to shout. I don’t know what to do!

Was he asking my consent to go back with them? Was he just making me aware that’s what he was doing? Because I don’t want to go across the river to the underpasses under the South Embankment. It’s just about the worst place to be sleeping rough in London unless you’ve got some sort of status, unless you have friends with knives or some other sort of weapon who will defend you. I don’t want to go there, and I don’t want to get wasted. I just want Julian to turn around and stop. I want his care, his warmth, but right now Pasha is the only one who is hanging back for me.

P
ASHA
’
S
HANDS
are pale and cold, and yet he looks at me intently and takes both my hands in his, as if I am the one half frozen to death. And maybe I am—the sensation of his fingers on my skin now barely registers.

Emptily I stumble along behind him as he follows the others, now so far ahead they are only visible as they pass under the streetlights. I can barely walk for coughing. I wait for Julian to turn around, to hear me, to fucking feel something and remember, but he keeps walking, Roxy’s arm draped over his shoulder, his body swaying at Julian’s side. An irrational surge of jealousy sweeps through me. I feel too weak to fight against it.

Dark water rushes beneath us as we cross the bridge, and even though I can’t see it, I can feel its power… hear it calling me.

“Hurry up,” Pasha says, his Russian breathless, slurred.

But I can’t. I hang back, gripping the railing—though it’s as painful as gripping onto a piece of ice, the pain shooting through my fingers like an electric shock—and I stare into the blackness, trying to make out the formless ripples of the water, its ever-changing shape.

He comes to stand next to me. I’m surprised to find he is a little taller than I am, but he leans forward so our shoulders are the same height.

Everything blurs along the Southbank. The lights hurt my eyes.

“It will be okay,” he says softly, pressing our arms together, but I wish he wouldn’t touch me. It’s not him I want to be standing beside me, telling me that.

Angrily I wipe my tears away.

It’s not fucking okay
, I sign, knowing full well he doesn’t understand. I want to shout the words. I want to know how it feels. I want to let the anguish out, and for some sound to tear out of me, so everyone will know how much this hurts, but all I do is cough.

W
HEN
WE
reach the underpass, there is no sign of Julian or Roxy. Hunched dark shapes are mostly camouflaged against the walls of the tunnel, but I can hear the low murmur of their voices, and I can feel the watchful gaze of their eyes on our bodies. For a second Pasha looks around, eyes wide like a lost child, but then he schools his expression back to that of some wasted streetwise kid, and we stagger on.

Ahead of us a few fires flicker, the vastness of the space we’ve come to all but invisible in the darkness. It’s as icily cold as the street in here, but at least we are protected from the rain, and the ice won’t form like garlands of frozen flowers over our exposed skin. Pasha makes his way to the far corner, stepping over bodies—shapes that could be drunk, passed out, sleeping, or dead—we don’t stop to check. From a distance, I spot Julian’s light hair. I could pick him out from a crowd of thousands, my eyes drawn to him, only him. Cricket is there too, his face lit up in front of a small fire. He looks old, his skin patchy and wrinkled, even though he can barely be twenty-five. A small pile of foil wraps and what I take to be a pack of needles sit on the floor next to him. Even in the minute it takes before we reach that side of the room, he has another customer, the exchange so open and casual, I wonder if he cares. Maybe he doesn’t have to—on either side of him are two large silent forms, as imposing as guardians of the gates, the hoods of their coats pulled down, covering their faces.

As soon as we reach them, Roxy drags Pasha away, and the boy laughs, the sound high and fake, like the drunken act he puts on.

I take the last few steps and am ready to drop to my knees in front of Julian, ready to fall into his arms, ready to do anything it takes to just be close to him again. But I stop. I see the way his body is slumped down against the wall, his head fallen forward against his chest, his sleeve rolled up his arm. And with a sickening realization of what he’s done, I turn. In a breathless panic I search him out—I know whose fault this is. I know who gave Julian the drug. I know who’s fucked things up for me and who will keep fucking things up for me, ever since he told some thug I couldn’t scream however much they beat me. I’m so fucking angry and afraid and lost—and all these feelings concentrate into a pure spear of hate, and with every last bit of strength I have left in my body I launch myself at Cricket and pull him into the fire.

The pain is wailing and raw. A blinding white heat sears my skin, and I can’t breathe. I’m struggling wildly. I feel Cricket bite me, punch my neck before I’m suddenly dragged roughly across the floor and dumped beyond the crowd that has quickly gathered. Distantly I make out Pasha’s voice, a quiet mumble beneath Roxy’s screaming. The whole of me is hurting, my arms and hands are burned, the pain now becoming overwhelming.

I curl up, sob once, and realize this is it, this is the low I reached once before, except that time I had a spark, I had a tiny hope to live for, a tiny hope that Julian was still alive somewhere and that I was going to find him. But how can I find him right now? How can he find me? Right now he’s gone completely, and I need him! I need him so much, but however hard I search, however hard I try, I can’t give him what the drugs can. I can’t take the pain away. I can’t make him forget. What chance have I got against this?

Ever since we met, we had an unwritten rule, an unspoken promise we wouldn’t let ourselves be reduced to this, that we would fight as hard as we could, because once you start taking drugs out here, there is no way back.

Oh God, it hurts.
I let my lungs empty out on the concrete beside me, and when it comes, I welcome the blackness.